


soft focus

by kittenscully



Series: x files prompt fills [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Abduction Arc (X-Files), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Porn with Feelings, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:20:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24775276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully
Summary: The guilt crushes him, but there isn’t room for it, not when she needs him so badly. He picks her hand up and doesn’t let go, insists that it’s for her and not himself.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: x files prompt fills [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789186
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	soft focus

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to a prompt asking for headcanons about what their relationship would be like post-Scully's abduction arc if they'd already been together at the time she was taken.

The Scully who returns to him isn’t the same as the one who was taken, but his feelings towards her have only grown. A camera zoomed in, desperate to catch every moment, desperate not to lose sight of her again. 

Soft focus on her oversized suits, soft focus on her delicate, beautiful features. Soft focus on the steady way she follows him, forgives him all his trespasses without a word, even when he doesn’t deserve it. He feels endlessly selfish for coveting her despite being the cause of her hurt, but he’s helpless to stop. 

Her chin is tremulous and round like a robin’s egg, her lips wide and full. She falls asleep resting against his shoulder, and the waves of her hair feel like feathery and light between his fingers. 

When she wakes, she is startled and wide eyed, clutching at his jacket. And when she comes back to herself, she moves away as if reprimanding herself for touching him. As if she isn’t still his, as if she’s second-guessing her safety. He gathers her up against him despite the way she murmurs his name, and each time, it only takes moments for her to go soft and slack in his arms, her little hands pawing at him desperately. 

The work has suffered since she returned, but it’s no fault of hers. After all, she isn’t openly scared, not anymore – he is. Every time she’s out of his sight, he worries that she’ll be taken. Every time she’s injured, he sees her dying in that hospital bed. 

The guilt crushes him, but there isn’t room for it, not when she needs him so badly. He picks her hand up and doesn’t let go, insists that it’s for her and not himself.

He doesn’t fuck her against walls, not anymore, or against filing cabinets in their basement. He doesn’t hold her down like she used to goad him into doing. He’s too wary for that, too worried that he’ll break some new, invisible boundary. Because she doesn’t bowl him over like or wrestle with him, doesn’t pin him against the inside of her door and stretch up to sink her teeth into his neck like before. Instead, she keeps her hands to herself, small and unsure. 

She doesn’t laugh delightedly when he kisses her and skates his fingers over her ribs. Instead, she catches them and holds them against her, her lower lip quivering, as if she’s scared to go any further. As if she’s afraid it’ll be the last time he ever touches her. 

*

It’s only a week after she gets back that he clears out his bedroom. He rents a storage locker, and spends a weekend carting everything down the stairs and into a car that isn’t his. She is too precious, now, to be laid down exclusively on the couch where he still sleeps. 

He has so much to make up to her. When and if she wants him again, she deserves satin and silk sheets, armfuls of roses and bubble baths that smell of living, growing things. 

It’s the day after that when she knocks on his door, tentative and trembling. They haven’t been alone together outside of work in months. She says his name, hands forced to stay at her sides so as not to touch him until she is allowed. He pulls her inside with a gentle palm on her waist, and she shivers and melts back against the door, flushed pink and pretty with desire and shyer than he’s ever seen her. He wants to kiss her, but what he wants doesn’t matter. He wraps her in his arms instead, presses his mouth to her hair over and over and rocks her. 

When she mumbles _please_ , he finally takes her to bed. Her eyes are huge, glossy and needy, and she grips him so tightly he aches. Her body is softer than before, her skin warm and pale, and he is gentler than he’s ever been, worried that he might leave a bruise if he grabs too hard. He kisses her until she is gasping and drunk, shelters her body with his when she shivers. 

She hesitates every step of the way, her hands moving to hide herself as he takes off her shirt, and when he asks why, she turns her face into the pillow.

He catches her chin in his fingers, gently coaxes her to look at him. 

“I don’t look like I did before,” she tells him, her voice so quiet he has to lean in close to hear. “I’m not the same.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he tells her. “I don’t only want you because you look a certain way.”

She doesn’t believe him, but that’s nothing new. He knows how to convince her, kisses her neck until she softens, lays his palms atop her hands, both of them clasped over her breasts. The way that she still wants him is evident in every shuddering exhale, even with her insecurity.

He asks her if she trusts him. She nods, panting through parted lips, and he lifts away her hands. _Let me show you, Scully. I have proof._

*

Before, every time had been reckless and passionate, her legs around his waist or her body bent over the desk, urging him on with her pretty little purrs. She’d ridden him like breaking a wild stallion, almost too rough, and she’d been dripping wet for him when he reached under her skirt, even as she carried on their pointless banter. 

He can’t remember ever being able to take his time, to work her up himself, tenderly and slowly. Now, with her nervous and flushed beneath him, there isn’t any other way. 

Her arms, covered with kisses, her hands, cradled to his face until any trace of tension leaves the joints. Her shoulders, her collarbone, her chest, mapped out with gentle touches, his lips and his thumbs caressing her until she stops trying to hide. Her stomach, so much softer now, no longer flat and tense like before, nuzzled and kissed and adored. 

Nothing left neglected, nothing left unloved. No room left for her to mistake his intentions or doubt how he feels. 

When he returns to her mouth, there are tears in her eyes. 

“Mulder,” she says. 

_Do you believe me now, Scully?_

“Let me take care of you,” he says. 

She nods, her hands curling around his jaw as she kisses him.

There will be no pleasure on his end, other than what he gets from giving it to her. He doesn’t deserve it. He’ll do penance in the valley between her thighs, beg her to forgive him silently with every passing moment.

He confesses that he loves her selfishly, amidst strokes of his tongue, that he’s always loved her, helpless and reverent. He isn’t even sure whether she hears him. Her cunt pulses as she comes, salty-sweet and dripping down his chin, and the clench of her fingers in his hair is the roughest way that she’s touched him since she’s returned, and he’s missed her, missed her, missed her. 

*

After, in his shower, she’s a new Scully again. Different than the one he first met, different than the one who was returned to him. 

He’s hunched over as she works shampoo into his hair. The suds run down her chest, and he watches, frames her ribs with his palms and leaves them there, as if to promise that it won’t be the last time he touches her. 

Her hands are still slippery as she pulls him down, resting their foreheads together, drawing in gulps of steamy air. The flush is still present on her skin, and he starts to grow hard again the moment that she crushes their lips together.

Her palm cups his cock before he can argue, her touch gentle and firm, inviting no argument or protest. He opens his mouth to tell her no, that he doesn’t deserve it. But she squeezes him and kisses the corner of his mouth before he can, and shakes her head. 

With her hand working up and down his shaft, she tells him that she’s sorry for abandoning him, that she’s sorry for coming back someone else. That she’s sorry for almost being another person that he loved and lost. He gasps into her mouth, his stomach aching with need and guilt, and tells her breathlessly that it isn’t her fault. 

“And it isn’t your fault, either,” she murmurs. “Mulder, it isn’t your fault.”

And then, she confesses that she loves him, and he spills helplessly onto her stomach.

She kisses him with her eyes wide open, not a trace of regret or hesitation, and then she moves him under the water, washes away all his trespasses without a word. 


End file.
